Sunday, 15 November 2009

I went to Sandringham the other week to visit the Queen! Or the Queens estate in Norfolk anyway. I was hoping she would be there to have tea with us but she wasn't. Maybe next time! The rooms and furniture inside the Palace were SO beautiful, all gold and white and jade and rose quartz. I want to live there! There were clocks everywhere, and a gold sword encrusted with rubies.

I've been drawing in a lot of very very nice posh places recently to gather research for my book. I want to get as much detail as possible! Here are some of my sketches:You know what I've been watching lately, In preparation for Christmas? The Grinch! It's one of my absolute favourite films! I love the way that the Whos live inside a snowflake. But my all time best best bit is where Martha May Whovier stands outside her house and starts firing a gun at it. She's wearing this really cool sexy santa outfit and lines of fairylights shoot out of the gun and all over her house! Apparantly they sell fairylight guns in Cyberdog now but I don't think they're quite the same!What's your favourite Christmas film? Mine's a tie between The Hogfather, The Snowman and The Grinch!

Monday, 9 November 2009

I've been working on character design for my kids book that I am illustrating at the moment. I don't really want to write too much about it because ultimately I want to get it published (I've been working on it for three years now! It's my baby!) This is why I haven't updated much lately because I'm wary about putting it on the internet. Here's a teeny tiny sneak preview of the first draft for one of the characters: On Sunday I went to Starbucks in Norwich and sat at the bar thing at the window where you can see all the people sitting outside. Had to draw them quite quickly because they kept moving and leaving. Here are my top three favourite looking people that I saw:I love deep deep brackets, wish I had them:This guys friend left a WHOLE peach and pomegranite frapucino on the table:It's weird, these people will never know they're immortalized on paper from that morning. It's like photography, I always wonder how many random tourist photographs that I'm in the background of without knowing.

Me and my friend Bruno (who does 3d animation) are going to make a book about a little rag boy who goes on some kind of adventure round London. We havn't quite decided on the story yet. This is a really quick first sketch I did of the little rag boy while we were talking about ideas over msn:I really like the colours orange and black together at the moment. It's probably something to do with Halloween just gone and all those pumpkins!This^ was my favourite carved pumpkin I saw this year! (by Rebecca Poole) Cat shapes are cool. I love them.

Tuesday, 3 November 2009

Yes it's more cake, I need to start drawing other things. Cupcakes are so in fashion at the moment though and to be fair this is only a very small part of another much much bigger project. (which ISN'T all about cake) You will see at the end of the year!Anyway, as you can see (above) I have been practicing drawing things NOT using black line because usually I outline EVERYTHING. I'm quite pleased with some of the results :)These ones (above) do have black line. You can see the difference. I have been experimenting with it, seeing what looks better. I'd be grateful for any comments on this subject!

Have you ever been to Candycakes in London? It's an amazing cupcake shop! This is the window display there:They have flavours like lemon poppyseed and chocolate fudge and everything is brightly coloured- it's an explosion for your eyes! You get them in a box like this:(Actually to be honest the second time I had a cake from here it wasn't that great but I think it's worth going to just for the window display and colours. Its like Willy Wonka land!)

On that same day we also went to Fortnum and Masons in London and walked past a load of patisserie kind of shops:The window displays in Fortnum and Masons were wicked!Inside the shop though I was shocked to see they were selling OVEN ROASTED TARANTUALAS!!! They looked horrible! And also chocolate covered ants and scorpians inside lollies. Weird. Everything was already decorated for christmas. There were boxes of crackers for five HUNDRED pounds! Haha bit out of my price range!Designer cupcakes, frog king cupcakes, halloween cupcake, flamingo cupcakes...

And here's another example of where I have been experimenting with not using black line. You can definitely see the difference where i have done the tray of hearts at the bottom with and without:I think I prefer the ones without black line. What do you think?

Wednesday, 14 October 2009

This was something I did for a competition over the summer. I've never done anything like a comic strip before, didn't really have a clue what I was doing, don't even read the things. Anyway I gave it a shot and this is the result!

Some people understand it when they read it and others can't work out what's going on! Let me know if you get it! As I say, I've never attempted anything like this before.

I think I'd quite like to have a tattoo that moved round my body, would be like a little friend haha, as long as it was nice to me and didn't scratch! What do you reckon? Moving tattoo, yay? nay?

Friday, 9 October 2009

I think it's very important to draw things from life, especially cake! (Then you can eat it afterwards!) I wanted to draw a cake house, so me and my housemate went to Tescos and bought a few of those 79p sponge cakes and some butter and icing sugar and silver balls and food colouring and liqourice allsorts and swiss roll and mini swiss rolls and created this:Five tiered pink cake! Fit for a cake lady to live in. I'm gonna paint a picture of it and then everyone can EAT it!

Monday, 21 September 2009

A few weeks ago me and my good friend Bruno went to see Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.Peter Pan is my all time favourite book/film!So I was extremely excited.

Me and Bruno drew each other on the tube.A random man randomly judged our pictures.This is my picture of Bruno:Peter Pan was AMAZING! If you havn't seen it you must!!It's going to hit the O2 soon I think.

Anyway. Tinkerbell was wearing a PINK TUTU and had FAIRYLIGHTS in her hair!She was played by Itxaso Moreno and was absolutely perfect for it! She was very fiesty and rude and funny but also quite cute.How Tinkerbell is meant to be.It's a shame you can't really see the lights in her hair in the picture.They were so cool.

This is a Starbucks in London......where we had coffee suprisingly enough.

On the subject of plays and films I saw Dorian Gray last night.Has anyone else seen it?What did you think of it?

I found it quite scary but it was one of those films I found my self thinking about all next day.Really dark, and I didn't like it WHILE I was watching it but looking back on it I think it was a good film.Interesting, disturbing, gothic.

Friday, 18 September 2009

At the moment, one of our uni projects is to make promotional postcards that go alongside quotes. This is one of mine:The living are just the dead on holiday- Maurice Maeterlinck

On the subject of ice cream and sweet yummy food I discovered some AMAZING cakey things today on le net. Firstly if I get married I want a cake like this one:
And secondly I discovered the work of this guy Scott Hove. It's a ROOM of fake cake! Incredible!

Thursday, 17 September 2009

We went to the sailing club one day in Dubai and there was this massive poster with all these fish on it. Some of them were really weird looking, stripy, spotty, spiky, scaly... I drew a few:I never realised before that there are sharks in the sea over there!

I drew this on the plane on the back of a Costa bag. Costa does THE best frapuccinos, you know those blended ice drinks? Maybe they're called Frescatos I don't know. Anyway after tasting the Cafe Nero and Starbucks ones many times this summer, Costa definitely wins hands down! Anyway this isn't supposed to be a review. These are people with carpets on their heads:And finally! This is my last post on my adventures in Dubai. I've run out of pictures to put up drawn on random pieces of paper and leaflets that I've picked up. It's back to drawing on plain white paper again!

Carrie over at carrotspeak inspired me to write this bucket list. I've never done this before. It's basically a list of goals... (mainly small selfish ones) I'll keep it short!

1- To get my series of books published. Eventually.2- Move to London! if only for a short while.3-Design my tattoo even though I'm never gonna have the guts to get it done!4-Buy super sparkly diamond encrusted high high heels like the ones that I saw in Dubai! (they were WAY too expensive though!)5-Run round in stupid costumes taking pictures in every photobooth somewhere6- Invent or go to a club that has a carousel in it and glitter raining from the ceiling with black and white stripy walls and chandeliers.7-One day to save up enough glitter to fill a bath so I can just sit in it :)
(yeah a bit pointless though)8-Read the whole Bible9- More butterflies and adrenalin rushes!10-Go on Big Brother- this one I'm debating.

Monday, 14 September 2009

We did a lot of swimming in Dubaiit's hard to actually do any excersise in the pool thoughbecause the water is SO warm!Like a bath.You end up just flopping about in it.I drew these on some blue plastic bags with a permanent penI like the way the scanner made the writing on the back of the 'page' shine through.

There's no time left for outdoor swimming in England now!Too cold!I don't mind though, I like autumn and winter.I like wearing tights and boots and scarfsI like fireworks night and Halloween and CHRISTMAS!Christmas is my absolute favourite time of year!But let's not wish the time away!

Sunday, 13 September 2009

I flew on Emirates to Dubai last week.They were amazing!SO many channels on the TVI got to watch Beetlejuice and listen to dolphin music.AND they had tetris!I did loads of drawing too:The air hostesses had BRIGHT, SHINY red lipstick-I could almost see my reflection in it.Everything else was beige.even the bits of paper on the food trays (see below)which also had a really weird texturelike velvetI drew these from a magazineThe amount of things to draw when you're sitting facing the back of another seat is slightly limited.I love middle eastern design, it's so intricate and detailed!I always find Dubai such an inspiration when I go there.Even the pillars at the airport are glittery!

Friday, 11 September 2009

so this week in Dubai I decided to experiment.I didn't allow myself to bring a sketchbook anywhere.I had to draw on what I could find in the place I was inThis was in Johnny Rockets as you may have guessed^I really liked Johnny Rockets :)I got to have dr pepper with cherry flavouring in it.My sister had coke with chocolate flavouringAnd there was this cool juke box thing:I drew it on a napkin and the ink kept sinking in.